When the Spanish realize the presence of Italian criminal organizations in their own country, it will already be too late». The warning is from Giovanni Russo, deputy attorney general of the National Anti-Mafia Directorate (DNA) who has spent almost 37 years fighting from the courts against the different mafia groups, for which Spain has become a place of vital importance in their network of criminal business.

Two significant arrests that have taken place in recent days have once again highlighted this. On August 5, a joint operation between the Spanish National Police and the Italian Carabinieri allowed the arrest in Madrid of Domenico Paviglianiti, who was in search and capture in his country because he was pending the fulfillment of a sentence of eleven years and eight years. months for the crimes of homicide, belonging to a mafia association and drug trafficking. Paviglianiti is the boss of the homonymous clan of the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, today considered the most powerful of the 'Cosa Nostra' organizations and which has been operating in Spain for at least 25 years.

Only two days after the arrest of Paviglianiti in the Madrid neighborhood of Cuatro Caminos, Maria Licciardi, head of one of the clans of the Camorra and probably the most powerful woman in this criminal cartel that emerged in Naples and its region, Campania. Licciardi was traveling to the capital of the Costa del Sol to visit her daughter, who lives there, although the investigators are clear that the displacement was not unrelated to the investments that her mafia group has in our country.

“Spain is seen as a very important place from which to continue expanding the interests of organized crime and where criminals have a better hope of achieving a degree of impunity. The initial relationship of the mafia organizations with Spain is explained because it constitutes a very important node for drug trafficking networks with Africa and Latin America due to its geographical position”, explains Russo. “It is a secure base and a target for mafia illegality. It is a key place in the transit of drugs, but also a place to invest and launder black money." That initial interest grew over the years.

In addition to becoming a place where some gangsters managed to hide from justice to start a new life trying to go unnoticed, our country has gradually become a favorable ground to try to do business and invest, in which money is laundered money obtained by criminal means. This is revealed by the latest semi-annual report presented to the Italian Parliament by the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate (DIA), the body made up of more than 4,000 agents chosen from among the best of the Police, the Carabinieri and the Finance Guard. Together with the DNA, it constitutes the spearhead in the fight against organized crime. The Camorra, the mafia group of Italian origin with the greatest presence in Spain after the 'Ndrangheta, takes advantage of its tentacles in our country "to carry out further illegal activities," according to the aforementioned DIA report.

The 'Ndrangheta and the Camorra have spent years buying homes, other real estate and businesses in Spain through intermediaries. "At first some may not consider this a problem because it seems like an investment, but it is a flow of money that comes from criminal interests and that ends up contaminating society," warns Russo. The first phase of the economic and social infection that the gangsters seek comes when they convince lawyers, directors of bank subsidiaries and tax advisers to collaborate with them and become their front men. According to the Deputy Attorney General of the DNA, this is something that is already happening in Spain and that constitutes the "first social contamination."

The next step comes when gangsters try to corrupt or scare local authorities into looking the other way and allowing them their business. "If they succeed, it goes one step further and the criminals will feel stronger, until they reach a point where they feel so strong that they will have no problem flaunting their power."

This is the situation in some areas of Italy, where criminal organizations exercise greater territorial control than State institutions. «It is then that public opinion will wonder what has happened, but it will be too late. We must act now, "asks the prosecutor.

The task of stopping the international expansion of mafia groups involves collaboration between the security forces of different countries. Grasso only has words of gratitude for the Spanish Police and the Civil Guard, which he considers "loyal, not corrupt and prepared to cooperate and work together." On the other hand, he lacks better judicial coordination at the European level to have a "common strategy" that offers "a supranational vision" of criminal flows. "In the DNA we think that the national level and local particularities must be overcome." Without this new "philosophy" it is difficult to keep up with criminal organizations with a clear global vision and ramifications in many countries.

He is also recognized by a member of the Italian security forces who has spent years in the fight against the mafia and who demands to remain anonymous. “It is difficult for us to follow his evolution. More and more we find types in jackets and ties who manage to infiltrate the highest economic level to launder black money," says this veteran agent, who remembers how in the 1990s the Spanish police and other European countries "did not understand" to their Italian colleagues when they warned them about the infiltration of mafia organizations in their own territories. "Now everything is easier and the sensitivity of the European Union is stronger in the face of this phenomenon, but there are still cases in which it is not easy for us to obtain an extradition."

General Giuseppe Governale, director of the DIA until last year, already warned in a meeting with foreign journalists in 2018 of the infiltration of the 'Ndrangheta and the Camorra in the Spanish Mediterranean, citing in particular the Balearic Islands and the Coast brava. «The presence is particularly relevant in this archipelago. It is enough to go to a small island in the Balearic Islands to see that all the shops and restaurants are managed by Neapolitans, “commented Governale, who was probably referring to Ibiza, the usual destination for Italian tourism and where the Camorra has interests.

This is what some residents of the Pitiusas Islands have been denouncing for years, which were shaken last June when, during an illegal party held in a luxurious villa, two Italians were shot by a compatriot who he could then be arrested by the Civil Guard. The attacker had a criminal record and had a case pending in the courts of Ibiza for a crime related to drug trafficking.

"The mafia is something that Spaniards are very interested in, but they don't know they have it at home," says journalist Íñigo Domínguez, author of 'Crónicas de la mafia' and 'Paletos salvajes: crónicas de la mafia II '. With these volumes, he has precisely tried to open the eyes of public opinion in our country to what the Italian mafia organizations, responsible for at least 6,000 murders, according to some estimates, really mean. «There is a false myth associated with the mafia. In reality, they are people with a brutal mentality and manner, capable of even killing and torturing children”, concludes Domínguez. «For them there are no red lines. When you see that gangsters are on the worst scale that you can have of a person, you begin to understand the phenomenon.